A Depressing Calculation of Time
The posting of this blog seems even more appropriate after a week-and-a-half absence from posting. Oh, how the time gets away from me. And while I could list all the events of the past week or so that have kept me from my blog…I prefer to blame the graphs below
“Every year seems to fly by a little faster.”
“When I was young, summer lasted forever!”
Go ahead and fill in your own similar sentiment, it’s a common enough theme. How is it that one minute you’re a ten-ten-year-old counting the agonizing days until Christmas, and the next you’re a thirty-year-old parent wondering where all your holiday prep time escaped to?
I’ve heard many an explanation for this time warp phenomenon. I’ve read a doomsday prophet claiming that time itself is speeding up and will soon spiral away into incoherence in these final days. I’ve heard others say that as we get older, we just get busier so it just feels like time is speeding up. Both arguments have their points. I mean…time is a slippery thing. As the only dimension that appears to just have one direction, it generally just hurts your head to think about it too much. However, since it makes my headache worse when I start imagining that the very structure of time and space itself is changing just so I can explain why my summer vacation zipped by so fast, I think I’ll stick to the idea that our perception of time is changing.
So, I present to you a little theory I like to explain to people at inappropriate times…birthdays, busy Christmas seasons and the like.
The mind measures the passing of time in relation to the amount of time that it has previously experienced.
That’s it. The rest of this post is just me explaining what I’m talking about with that sentence. So, if you’ve already got it…you can go ahead and jump down to the comments section. However, while it seems like a simple statement, there are some sobering results.
Here’s an example of the above statement in action. To a ten-year-old, one year is 10% of his life. To a 20-year-old, it’s only 5%. So, having previously experienced only half as much time, a day in the life of a ten-year-old is perceived by that ten-year old to be twice as long as that same day perceived by a 20-year-old.
Therefore, each day really IS shorter than the one before it.
This means that the bulk of your life as you experience it is front-loaded in your childhood. By the time you get around to wondering where all the time went, you’ve probably already passed the halfway point of your perceived life.
Depressed yet? No? Ok, then…let’s look at some graphs!
Note for the Geeks really interested in the math here:
I’ve been toying with this idea since college, but had never really sat down and tried to crunch the numbers. When I did, the immediate problem I found was that those first four years constitute a HUGE portion of your life since every minute to a newborn seems like an eternity. At first I tried to reconcile that...change my equation to fix the apparent flaw. However, I realized that there need not be an error at all since we can’t remember those years properly.
For the first few years of our lives, we are unable to string together our memories into sequential events. An infant has yet to learn the magic of turning past, present, and future into a cascading story. When we DO learn this, we redesign our memory filing system and thus are unable to access all the old stuff that was filed in some different manner. Our infant memories may still be floating around in our brains, and we may even remember snippets or scenes…but the cohesive flow of memory doesn’t set in until we learn how to file them correctly. Therefore, maybe that first year DID pass at an outrageously slow pace…we wouldn’t remember it. And since we’re dealing with perception of time…I chose to discard the periods of time that we can no longer perceive. Plus…it makes the percentage chart below much less disturbing.
Also, all the number crunching assumes a life span of 80 years.
Sure, sure, so the years keep getting faster...that's somewhat depressing. However, the real kicker comes when you start asking, "How much of my life have I already experienced?" Since the "long" years are probably behind you and you really only have the fast years to look forward to...it's not a pretty picture. We reach the half-way point of our experienced life right around 19.
So I leave you to ponder the depressing graph below. You're welcome to argue the finer points of my theory. I'll even send you my spreadsheet if you'd like so we can haggle over the numbers. You're also welcome to just roll your eyes and wonder why someone would spend so much time making charts like these.
Anyway, I don't claim that everything is correct here...but it sure feels about right, doesn't it?
15 comments:
Holy crap! I certainly hope you're not pulling our collective legs here because this all makes perfect sense to me. Not only that- I've lived a little over half of the extent of the graph and I can vouch for it! But dern it to heck, there isn't a thing I can do to change the warp speed I'm approaching. I'm serious, you'll see when you get here. Enjoy those longer days now while you can!
I don't know about anyone else but I appreciate the time (HA!) you've spent preparing this thoughtful and informative post, Mokker!
And if I haven't already done so, I'd like to thank you for the honor of appearing on your blogroll :-)
This is great. I guess many have noticed that time is subjective, but you offer an appealingly precise mechanism for that phenomenon. I think the exception for childhood memory is exactly right. I don't agree that your conclusions are depressing, however. Childhood, for many people (certainly for me), was the best time of life. Isn't it great that we get to spend so much of our lives there?
At the other end of the line, maybe now I can empathize a bit more with those nursing-home victims shivering with wide-open eyes in bed with their clothes on all day long. At the far end of life, maybe time dilation contributes to some minds just losing their grip on the present. Maybe this is another, less-explored barrier to the really long lifespans that the transhumanists blather on about.
Taking the whole span together, maybe the time perception function of human brains occupies an evolutionary sweet spot that allows us to be productive as adults, but in turn deprives us of infant memories and at some point after 75 years gradually ceases to contribute to cognition. I'm not sure how I would model this, but I'm going to think about it.
Don't take this as a criticism, because I certainly have never thought about this in precisely these terms, but you invite comparison to the "Psychology" section on the "Time" page of Wikipedia. You provide more and better detail, however, and I'm thankful for your insight.
Ok, this is great and I love the last graph summarizing the area under the curve nicely...
One thought that comes to mind: Does this mean that old people who get really slow at some tasks are really just doing things at their regularly perceived speed? Hmm... That would explain how those young whipper-snappers are always so much faster.
Oh geezus Simon. Now MY head hurts. Hi Jet :-) There is some great material here for you.
75% - I can answer that for you, I'm old. The answer might surprise you. I do everything with lightning speed. You would too if you had so little time left.
{my word verification is :
XIYMXAS
Looks like a dyslexic Roman Christmas wish.}
Whoa. 2:50 a.m. was the WRONG time to read this for the first time.
I'm sure Simon's head almost popped off when he saw the graphs.
I see Simon's point, and that's why lately I've started seeking out things I've never done before, and spicing up what's repeated. Okay, Linda's going to make that sound dirty, but I'm leaving it.
Is this what mid-life crisis is all about? Buying a sports car because it's a huge break from the norm, a way to keep time from passing so quickly?
I like it, Moksha. I'm digging this train of thought.
Jet, LOL I had typed something about us going for a beer to relieve our headaches, but deleted it, not wanting to appear that I was hitting on you... I'm forgiving your comment about old people "thinking" they do things fast. My husband will tell you, sometimes I'm a blur (He's 5 yrs my junior) and that I drive like a maniac)
Not to disappoint you Mark, but whether or not that sounds dirty, it's my philosophy, too. It's a good way to live. But you're way too young to start worrying about a M-LC.
Ah, a kindred spirit...I've had the exact same thought as you, about 1 year being 10% of a 10 year old's total life, but 5% of a 20 year old's. Althought it has never occurred to me to explain it such great detail, with graphs and such. I'm suitably impressed.
Maybe this is why what happens to us in childhood can screw us up so bad as adults...it's a bigger part of our perceived experience.
Now I'm somewhat depressed by all this serious thinking...I'd better go look at baby pictures to cheer up.
Winkle - I'm not trying to pull anyone's leg...just spending too much time overthinking a simple idea (it's what I do). And do you REALLY do everything at lightning speed...or do you just THINK you are. I'd like to see some data on that ;)
Si - It's wonderful that you took the time to add so much to the discussion and you bring up some cool points. However, I don't totally agree. While "seeing everything as if for the first time" is a really great and poetic image, the reality would be far less appealing. While I agree that we shouldn't just run our new life experiences through the mental meat-grinder and miss the subtleties, I'm hesitant to say that we should ignore all the years of context we've built up. It's there for a reason. So yeah, keep trying new things and fight the urge to loose your wonder. However, unless you're willing to go all "Memento" on us, you'll still have all those years behind you speeding up your perception of time (if the general concept here is accepted).
While I was reading your essay here, I was reminded of the drug Flashback from Dan Simmon's Hyperion. It's a drug that allows the user to go back and relive past experiences. Some people got so addicted to it that they lived more of their life in flashback than in real time. It was a scary thought...but maybe the brain is set up this way already. I mean, when I experience something today, my brain accesses previous memories to add context to the new event. So, generally, the older the experience, the more times you access it for context and therefore the more time your brain spends focusing on that particular past event. That could also lead to a similar curve to the perception of time. Just a thought.
And yes...graphs do indeed rock.
Oaf - Aloha! How did I know this one would bring you out of the woodworks? Glad to have your input.
There are all sorts of examples like the one you bring up that I had planned on putting in this post, but opted to save them for the discussion. Related to your comment, I was thinking about the way youth culture seems to change faster and faster as you get older until at some point, older people tend to just stop trying to keep up with trends and technology, etc. Modern culture is dominated by those in slow-time. Like millions of little Shrikes zipping around with Diddy on their iPods, changing the rules so fast their elders can't even follow the patterns.
You're right...Wikipedia says the same thing. Ah well, there goes my dreams of "The Moksha Gren Theory of Time Perception." But, I've still got my graphs, dammit! And I encourage all my readers to go to Wikipedia, post my graphs and reference this page as a pivotal addition to the concept. (If Stephen Colbert can do it...why not me?)
75% - Absolutely. Although you'd think they'd trust their speedometers a bit more and stop clunkin' up the freeways. In a related thought...sit down with a 10 year old and your parents to a nice video game. Even you who have been a playa all your life won't keep up with that 10 year old...and your folks eyes will probably just glaze over. It's why old folks tend to gravitate toward games without reaction time: golf, cards, etc.
Jet - Nothing cool happens as a child? Have you seen how excited Norah gets at new things. Sure, to our jaded way of thinking, everything she's doing seems old hat and a bit boring. But if you really think about what it takes to learn how to reach out and grab a toy...you'll see her little brain is working overtime on some complex puzzles all day. I really wish I COULD remember what that was like.
Mark - Interesting thought on the mid-life crisis. The mind's natural way of slowing down the process a little.
And thanks for taking the time to comment despite the late hour. Just for future reference though, it's rarely a good idea to read me at 2:50 am. Either my inane ramblings will bored your sleep-starved mind or I'll give you a headache with unnecessarily complicated graphs. Either way...sleep is a better bet.
Mouse - Always happy to be suitably impressive. As for childhood trauma, maybe. The longer percieved time certainly couldn't help in that instance. Plus, if a child internalizes that a particular situation is threatening while s/he has no contradictory experiences to balance out that negative...I'd think that they are more likely to codify that experience into some sort of iron-clad rule in their minds. For instance, a guy who gets beat up by a belt-wielding mugger is less likely to develop a negative reaction to belts since he has years of positive and/or neutral experiences with a belt. A child has no such past experiences and thus can say, "belts are bad."
All - Thanks for all your wonderful comments. I figured Simon would get off on this sort of post, but it looks like everyone is getting in on the Geek action.
Horay for Geekery!!
Damn It!! I just KNEW there had to be a reason this year has flown by so fast.
Hi Simon-
Allow me a slightly off-topic post. I hope you don't mine receiving advice from a total stranger, but I feel must advise you against reading Hyperion. I found it to be a book that required a lot of effort for very little payoff...I was left going "Huh? Wha? Wuh?" after reading it. It just didn't make sense to me. (Where was the post where all the commenters were declaring their English degrees? Add me to the list.) I am also a literary nerd, so I'm qualified to make such pronouncements.
I know there are plenty of readers out there who love Dan Simmons (the Mokker and my husband FreddyJ are among them) but I felt I had to do my duty to the literary community. Now, go and "Read as thou wilt."
*sigh* That should be "mind" (not "mine")in the first line. The likelihood of making a typo is directly proprotional to your need to convince readers of your literary greatness. geez.
Speaking of reading as thou wilt, Simon, how's Moby Dick working for you? I still haven't completely made up my mind whether to read it or not but your recommendation may come out above the one who advised me against it...
(Mokker- now we find out how thoroughly the Farmer keeps an eye on you ... if he's still checking comments after all this time, you'll know he's breathing down your neck.) ;-)
Mouse - "Huh? Wha? Wuh?" indeed. Hy...Hyperion is my favorite book of all times. I reread it every few years just to fall in love all over again. No pay-off? Granted, the story doesn't wrap itself up nice and neat, but outside of Star Wars (and that had the advantage of reaching me when I was young and impressionable) no other story has so many images and characters that routinly pop into my mind. The Tesla Trees, Martin Silenus, the friggin' Shrike!
[sigh]
To each their own, I suppose, but I love it. And thanks again to Oaf for going so far as to rip the horrible, horrible cover art off his copy so that I would take it seriously enough to read it.
Linda - I know Simon is still reading here. He's as OCD as I am on these thing...he'll be back.
psst...Don't listen to Mouse, Si ;)
Oh, and howdy to Uncle Goldwing! Thanks for swing by to post. Let me know if next year goes even faster.
Knock. Knock. Simon? You ok, Buddy?
Post a Comment